Jim Marshall: A Legend Lost
The other day I heard the news that rock-n-roll photographer Jim Marshall passed away in his sleep. I’m guessing a lot of people don’t recognize the name but you definitely know his images – Johnny Cash flipping the bird, Pete Townsend at Woodstock, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and on and on and on.
He was the primary reason I got into photography. In college and back into high school I was always into music made well before my time, particularly Jimi Hendrix, and the Dead. In my dorm room I had a Fender Stratocaster and a Fender P-bass, harboring illusions of playing music when I wasn’t working in radio. The thing was, as much as I loved music, I was an absolutely AWFUL musician. I could get a few technical things down but I had no real talent for it. I suppose on some level I knew that yet wanted to be expert in it one way or the other so I started reading up on that era – San Francisco, the Sixties, etc. I began hearing about these magic ballrooms and venues like Winterland in San Francisco and Fillmore East in NYC and these articles were always accompanied by these wonderful black-and-white photographs of just about every musician I looked up to. There were a handful of photographers that kept popping up – Herb Greene, Baron Wolman and Jim Marshall. The Marshall picture that really got me though was one of Duane Allman playing his guitar in a Holiday Inn bathroom.
I think it was the intimacy of that unguarded moment that revealed the possibilities of photography and laid the seeds for photography’s role in my life. I began photographing music around Penn State, primarily the visiting musicians invited by the Jazz Club or the occasional blues musicians that would come through town. At the time I worked a Saturday night shift as a blues DJ on public radio and my interest with that music nearly eclipsed my obsession with the Dead. Almost!
I would take my Dad’s Canon AE-1 that he lent me for an art class, load up some TMAX 400 pushed 3 stops or if I had it, some P3200 and shoot in these dark little bars and clubs. However, after a few experiences shooting mainstream concerts at the arena at PSU and the 3-songs and you’re out BS, I realized that Marshall chronicled a really unique time in American music. It was like everybody was figuring it out as they went and music wasn’t just a commodity. It probably didn’t help that I though most of the contemporary music at that point pretty much sucked! Anyway, there are a bunch of really great remembrances of Jim Marchall out there and here is one of the best, plus a video of him speaking:
http://manginphotography.net/2010/03/jim-marshall-was-a-bad-ass/
A vacation, downtime and a bit of family history
Note: this post has been sitting in the drafts for a long while – not sure why. -mike
With my wife very close to completing her capstone project for her master’s degree, I thought it would be a good time to get out of town and let her have some peace and quiet to finish up. Plus I had a ton of vacation time accrued and my brother was getting ready to move into his first house. I packed up the truck and headed south to Savannah to help him move and paint his new place. On the way I was obligated to get some tasty BBQ.
In between moving and painting I got hooked on a couple TV shows and a video game. He put me on to Squidbillies, an animated show about redneck squids in Georgia as well as the HBO show Eastbound & Down which was created by and stars Danny McBride, a native of FredVegas. It is about as crass as you can imagine and of course I find it hilarious. Plus I like McBride – I think he’s funny as hell. I wish I had shot a better picture of him when he came through town a while back. Oh well… I also spent an inordinate amount of time in Savannah playing a video game called Fallout 3. I have been a fan of Fallout since the original came out for PC something like 10 years ago. I am proud to say (in a geek way) Ned and I had Wasteland – the basis for Fallout – for our Apple IIGS in the late 80′s.
I drove on down to Venice to visit my grandparents for a couple days as I hadn’t seen them in a while. While there, I sat down with my grandfather and recorded an interview with him about growing up on Long Island in the 20′s and 30′s through the end of his service in the Navy in World War II. Next time I’m down I hope to record another interview detailing the post war years as well as my grandmother’s recollections of Long Island, meeting my grandfather and her time working at the Merchant Marine Academy. I’ve been meaning to do this for a couple years after hearing about the Story Corps project. Growing up my brother and I would always press Pop for ‘war stories’ and he would talk about being in the South Pacific on one island or another or on the USS Northampton. In addition to gathering some audio, I copied a bunch of old photos.
Here’s Pop (left) in San Francisco, 1942 with a buddy from the Navy. When I asked who the woman was, he kind of smiled and said, “Va-va-voom!” The inscription said it was taken at a bar called Benny the Bum’s. I found a reference to the bar here that said it was located at 181 O’Farrell St in SF. I guess its a condo now. Anyway, hopefully soon I’ll take some time to edit together some audio and put some pictures up. Here’s Pop outside his Florida home, putting away his flag for the day:
I returned to Savannah to finish helping Ned when he told me he had taken a job at Fort Rucker in Alabama working on helicopters. Sounds like an awesome gig, so congrats to him. I guess it is kind of crappy timing though. Oh well – maybe I can win the lottery, become independently wealthy and buy his house from him. Right. The upside is that I will have an opportunity to travel to Alabama and ideally make some time to head west and explore the Mississippi Delta. Upon my return kelly and I went canoeing on the mighty Rappahannock River with some friends from work. It was a lot of fun as it was a beautiful day and the river wasn’t too hairy nor too low. Seven hours on the water is a long time though. maybe next time we’ll go for a shorter trip…
On a technical note, most of those pics were taken with my iPhone aside from the copy shot of Pop. And I used the TiltShift app on this last pic. I’m having fun playing around with the camera function on that phone… a definite time sink!
I went back to the grind and as always, my first assignment back made me want to go back on vacation! I won’t subject you to the actual image but here’s the assignment: “Pontiac is going under. Localize!” So there you have it.
A Welcome Break
Kelly and I have been on vacation in Key West for the past several days. It is our first since our honeymoon a couple years ago. While we are not much for the party scene, tend to wake early and also hit the sack early, you might think KW is not our scene. I can’t speak for my better half but I am enjoying myself. I like the kind of seedy, brokedown aspect of the keys, kin of an old-Florida vibe. Of course the price of things down here is a bit incongruent with that feeling, but I like it just the same. We’ve spent a lot of time just relaxing and reading, walking around town and taking it all in. The Duval St scene is interesting but neither of us are much into pub crawls or blind drunkenness!
I made the conscious decision not to bring any camer gear aside from our point n shoot and my iPhone. Camera Bag app is my favorite, for sure! Sometimes it’s just nice to just be a tourist. Here are a few snaps so far…..
shameless self-promotion
Contest season is over and not surprisingly I got shut out of the major ones – NPPA, World Press & Pictures of the Year. That’s OK there was a lot of big news this year and some really powerful work entered and my stuff didn’t come close.
On the upside, the judges of the Virginia News Photographers Association’s annual contest apparently saw fit to recognize a fair number of my pictures this year. Even more surprising was that I won a regional Edward R. Murrow award for News Documentary from the Radio Television News Directors Association for a radio piece I produced for the paper’s sister station WFLS about a local National Guard unit in Kuwait. Yes, you read that right – radio. I knew my telecommunications degree was not in vain and I was pleased to tell my long-suffering parents that their tuition money finally paid off, ten years down the line. Holy $#!* – ten years since I (barely) graduated?!?!! that’s a completely different story… Anyway, the piece is now in the running for a national Murrow award but I’m not holding my breath… Check out VNPA.org to see all the winners. Also, here are a couple of my photos that won in VNPA:
Sports Feature - First Place Colonial Forge's Joe Pantaleo jumps into the arms of coach Bill Swink following his victory over Fauquier's David Yost in the championship round of the 2008 Virginia Group AAA wrestling tournament at Oscar Smith High School in Chesapeake, VA on February 23, 2008. (Mike Morones/The Free Lance-Star)
Portrait - First Place Buddy Hayes of Chesapeake, VA , Miss Wheelchair Virginia, waits to give a presenation to the Lions Club with her service dog Ellie at Falls Run Community Center on February 27, 2008. (Mike Morones/The Free Lance-Star)
